Mass Times Changes
Since Easter, and the announcement of our priest changes, my mind has been fully occupied with potential changes to our daily and Sunday Mass times. We need to adjust things to give our new Claretian vicar both Spanish Masses each weekend, and I would like to use that as an opportunity for me to see each of our English Masses once every three weeks rather than once every four weeks.
But it is complicated. There are a lot of factors, and a lot of proposals and possibilities I am throwing out to see what might work. My first version of trying to communicate all of this was a 16-page white paper that was both too long and too short at the same time.
Rather than duplicate that 16-pager here, I want to let you know my process. For big decisions like this, I first talk it through with the staff. The parish staff members are my closest collaborators and they know the parishes almost as intimately as (and sometimes more than) I do. Plus, because we work together regularly, it is easier to have hard conversations built on trust. After the parish staff, I consult with the Pastoral Council(s), as their entire raison d’être is to be consultative body to the Pastor on major pastoral decisions. After both of these consultations, I go to the parishioners in whatever context possible. For this decision, we will likely do listening sessions after daily and Sunday Masses.
The reason I consult in this specific order is because I need to refine my thoughts and presentation for larger and larger groups. I start with a smaller, trusted group (like the staff) because if there are major things that I am not seeing or major blunders that I have made, they can help me fix and clarify those before I talk to a larger group, like the Pastoral Council. And the Pastoral Council helps me go through the same refinement process in preparation for going to the parishioners.
I met with the staff about Mass changes on Thursday, and there were already a lot of tweaks that I need to make to my whitepaper based on that feedback. Unfortunately, the Pastoral Council is seeing the same whitepaper (without refinement) this Saturday because I did not give myself enough time to integrate staff feedback before meeting with the Pastoral Council. Such is life. Hopefully about two weeks from now, I will have made adjustments based on feedback and will be able to share the discernment document with all of the parishioners.
A final note on this: I expect discussion to happen, and for staff and Pastoral Council members to talk to others as they try to formulate their thoughts. This is healthy. However, if parishioners are not used to this type of expanding consultation, they might hear about a change and assume that they have learned something that I am trying to hide from them, i.e., that a decision has already been made behind their backs. While I sometimes have to make executive decisions or emergency decisions, I try to do that very rarely and will always clearly explain my reasoning when the decision is announced. In this case, with the Mass times, know that nothing has been decided. You will be consulted – I just need to talk to smaller groups first.
Taking Children to Mass
I have been a staunch advocate of taking children to Mass from the moment of birth. I think children need to be taught how to go to Mass, and that teaching starts right away. And I hate the idea of families being separated on the Lord’s Day of all days. This has resulted in my, historically, being very skeptical of programs like Children’s Liturgy of the Word, though I have not outright banned it.
All of those assumptions were upended a week or two ago when one of my favorite Catholic commentators, Ed Condon (a canon lawyer and Catholic journalist) said on a podcast that whenever possible he tries to find childcare for his 2(?)-year-old daughter when his wife and he goes to Mass. That scandalized me. And then he made the canonical argument: Canon 11 states “Merely ecclesiastical laws bind those who were baptised in the Catholic Church or received into it, and who have a sufficient use of reason and, unless the law expressly provides otherwise, who have completed their seventh year of age.” Though the sabbath observance is a divine law, the expression of that observance through Mass attendance is an ecclesiastical law (which is why the Church can give dispensation from Sunday Mass attendance). So technically children are not bound to attend Mass until they are seven (or attain the use of reason, which might actually occur earlier for some children).
Now, dropping a kid into Mass cold turkey at the age of seven is not a recipe for success, so I still believe that children need to learn how to go to Mass through regular attendance with their parents. And I absolutely love seeing families at Mass with their young children. However, I also cannot argue with the canonical statement. I am definitely not making a recommendation one way or another. It is just a very new and surprising thought for me, and I like to bring such thoughts to our parish when they occur.
Fr. Moore 